Cleromancy
Assassin’s Creed and its excellent sales have been maligned as a triumph of advertising over substance. I don’t think that’s accurate, and I think it misses the point. I have a different theory as to why the game sold as well as it did, and it boils down to one simple thing: setting. It’s possible that droves of gamers were brainwashed by advertisements on TV and in the gaming media to run to their local Walmart, weak with anticipation of Ubisoft’s next masterpiece; however, it’s just as likely that gamers (especially those swimming in the figurative currents of the mainstream, whatever that means) were pushed over the edge from interested perusers to committed consumers by the promise of an interesting setting.
I admit, this all seems a bit like divination. There’s no data out there that will prove that setting was the, or one of the, deciding factors in gamers choosing to purchase Assassin’s Creed (although I’d like to do that polling). But in conjunction with what I’ll call the “AAA sheen” on the game (graphical fidelity, approval from elites, and marketing), I think the setting may have been a large factor. It was something instantly recognizable and different; it promised a playground that gamers had never had access to before; and the gameplay instantly resonated with familiar tropes like GTA’s sandbox play.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t particularly enjoy the game. But labeling its financial success as a direct result of a particularly good PR campaign ignores the game’s more obviously interesting attributes. It would be nice if its success were instructive to more game designers, but I don’t predict any end to the deluge of Faeruns, Iraqs, World War IIs, and Shiny Space Marine settings anytime soon.